Night in Shanghai (16 page)

Magic pulsed from the orchestra in looping, sinuous waves as dancers pressed together in the dark, and she wondered why she kept coming back to places like this. To torture herself? She would be Du’s for another ten years. She turned her back on the music and hurried out into the street.

At the café, she gave her name as Mrs. Gao,
Gao Taitai
, according to her instructions. She was always
Taitai
something or other, since women of her age were almost never unmarried. They seated her in a private room, where she ordered a pot of tea and two cups. When the tea had gone cool, she poured herself a cup and drank it, and after that, another. It was a full half hour past the allotted time when she finally heard footsteps in the corridor and the door rattled for a fraction of a second in its frame before opening.

The irritation she had been nursing died inside her as she looked into the face of Chen Xing. She had met him at the Vienna Garden during her early exposure to Communism; he was the one who had told her about Miss Zhang, the lovely and pregnant dance hostess who had been planted like a water lily, keening and begging Song with her eyes to save her life. Did he know what had happened to the girl?

Since that time she had seen Chen Xing’s name in the press, and knew that he held various civic posts and served as director of some of Shanghai’s biggest banks. He was also a producer of plays, a leader of the League of Left-Wing Theater People, and the host of a radical salon. He was famous for his scandalous affairs with women. But though he was left-leaning, no one knew he was a Party member.

She could see by the flutter in his eyes that he was just as surprised to see her. No doubt he had been told only that he was meeting a member who had come up with not just information but also a diamond. He certainly had not expected it to be someone he knew, and above all not her, someone connected to Du. She caught the note of admiration in his appraisal, and saw him assume she had stolen the diamond from her master.
Fool. No one steals from Du
.

“Gao Taitai.”
His smile was effortlessly smooth and vacant. “So nice to see you.”

She answered politely, “How is the family?”

Steps sounded outside the door. “Ah,” he said, “here is Miss Wu now.” And a girl came in, a child less than eighteen, cheeks firm and round like a honey peach. Who was she? His daughter? But a third person had never attended one of these meetings before.

In the next instant Song saw she was not his daughter, for she sat on his lap and curved her body against him, despite the fact that he was twenty-five years her senior. “Pleased to meet you,” Song said.

“Gao Taitai,”
the girl replied, and went right back to simpering in Chen Xing’s ear.

He whispered back to her and fondled her through her clothes as if Song were not even there. She found it shocking. He was not even trying to attend to the business they had come to conduct.

Then abruptly, he pushed the girl off his lap. “Be a good child and go get an extra teacup and a basket of soup dumplings. No, two baskets. Wait for them and bring them back. You have raised my appetite.” And he squeezed the firm round of her behind as she turned away.

Song endured bolts of humiliation as she forced herself to review how much time and care she had expended in dressing before she left the house today. Nervous as a bed of pins, she had tried on a dozen dresses, eventually settling on a plain
qipao
of gray cotton which made her look left-wing and serious, but still pretty. She wore her hair as usual, sweetly knotted with flowers at the nape, because to have left Rue Wagner any other way would have been to invite notice. In the end the look suited her, and when she walked out the gravel driveway and through the iron gates, she knew she was beautiful, ready for anything. And now she had to stare painfully at Chen Xing nuzzling this child-bauble.
Serene. Face of glass
. She watched Miss Wu walk to the door with the excessive, untrained switching of a young girl.

By the time the door clicked shut, Song was in control again. “Lovely,” she said neutrally, hoping that now they could talk.

But what happened went beyond her expectations: he changed completely. The sophisticated ennui drained from his face. His spine lifted, his eyes clicked to a different and infinitely more focused shade of black. In one turn of the head she saw the theatrical producer, the salon host, the man of ideas. “She is spoiled and simple,” he said dismissively. His voice had changed too, become level and grainy; gone was the oil-slick politeness she had heard before. “Easy to deceive. I always bring someone who is pretty and wooden-headed, so they can see the places I go and the things I do as I want them to. Forgive the intrusion. It is actually safer this way, and now we have a few minutes alone.”

She stared. Which was the real Chen Xing, the rich, bored man of the theater, or this concentrated, severe figure who now sat across from her? “Any news from the north?” she said. By this she meant the advance of the Japanese, but also Party headquarters, where all major decisions were made. For the past two years, the top leaders had been operating out of caves in Yan’an. The brain trust was there, the future. One day, when she was free, she too would go there.

He leaned closer. “I do have news. Peking is silent as a tomb, everyone just waiting. Japanese troops are massed outside the city. They have taken Tianjin, and Tanggu, the port that serves both those cities.”

“And will our troops protect Peking?”

“No. Chiang has ordered a withdrawal.” It was like a blow to her chest. So Peking would be handed over to Japan without a fight.

“We must comply,” Chen said sadly. “We are a united front with the Nationalists now—and also, Chiang is right. We could never hold them off.”

The injustice of it flamed up, burning her, parching her. “Will they give Shanghai to Japan the same way?”

“No! Here we will kill them one by one, starting with that foul swine Morioka. I heard he showed up at the Royal again, to see that piano player.”

“Yes, I have details.” Though the story terrified her, she kept her voice even as she repeated what she had heard from Lin Ming. “He gave the American a new record, with a saxophone player called Lester Young. He gets them by diplomatic pouch. The American loves the song; I am told he listens to it over and over, and his own saxophone players, two skinny brothers, a couple of drainpipes, they listen to it even more.”

Chen Xing sat back in his chair, momentarily silenced. “A song,” he said, and paused again. “You know,
Gao Taitai
, you have learned more than the West-ocean language; you understand how they think.”

She was taken aback. “I do my best to serve the cause.”

“I know. You do a good job. Your skills are high. You have been noticed.” She felt her insides chill, for he meant the diamond, as well as her English.

“I will serve in any way. Never speak English again if they want.”

He raised a hand. “Just be careful. Now, the next thing we want you to do is support Du’s plan to kill Morioka. Do anything you can to help it work.”

“But they are our enemies. If they want to use an American as bait, we should work against them and—”

“Miss Song,” he said, so surprised at her that he used her real name, “your opinion was not requested.”

She blinked back.

“You will help this plan.”

“Yes,” she said, resistance hammering inside her.

“And also,” Chen continued, “we still need money. So if there is any way that you can—”

The door opened, and Miss Wu sauntered through. “Food is coming,” she said, proud of her competence in arranging this.

Chen Xing slid smoothly into his other self. “What do you mean, you think Hu Die is pretty? She’s a great actress—did you see her in
Twin Sisters
?—but she’s too noble to be pretty, almost like a carving, a face made of stone.” He drew Miss Wu to him. “I prefer a real girl!”

Song sipped her tea, watching them laugh and trade banter, understanding that the meeting was over. Chen Xing wore his public face now, puffy-eyed, weary, brined in a thousand shallow nights—a complete change.

He looked up. “As I was saying, Mrs. Gao, if there is any way that you can again attend the weekly salon, we would all be so grateful. What you contributed was valued by all, last time. We hope you will return again.”

She smiled neutrally. “I will try. Mr. Gao keeps me busy.” She rose, aware that her dress was frumpy and out of date and that she herself was old. “Please give my best to your family. Good day. Good day, Miss Wu.”

The girl looked up as if surprised she was still there.

She swept out, her final turn as the regal matron, and did not let her mask drop until she was outside, her heels tapping on the sidewalk, her profile echoing her in the shop windows she strode past. What was she going to do? She could not support a plot with Thomas as its bait. And what would she do with the diamonds, three in the wall behind her night table and at least twenty-five more in the pouch on the back of Du Taitai’s picture frame? Du Taitai had forgotten them once again, and no one else knew of their existence.

Maybe, she thought, boarding the clanging trolley, she should take them and emigrate. And this strange, exotic thought stayed with her all the way home, to Rue Wagner.

The assassin Du hired, Zhao Funian, came highly recommended by the Nationalists’ paramilitary force as a cold killer, though his background was ordinary in every way.

Zhao had been raised south of the Yangtze, in the painted beauty of Zhejiang, where his father owned five
mu
of land—and also had five sons, prompting Zhao Funian to leave home at an early age. This was the modern world, and men no longer had to spend their lives serving their clans, especially fifth sons with no land and no wives of their own. So he went to Hangzhou, where he managed a numbers game and collected monthly bribe envelopes from merchants, eventually becoming bodyguard to the city’s Beggar Boss. From there it was only a matter of time until the Nationalist Secret Police tapped him to eliminate collaborators. Competitive, clever, secretive, charming when he needed to be, he was perfect for the work.

“And the jazz man, is he to die too?” he had asked Du Yuesheng.

“Spare him, but only if you can.” Du’s eyes narrowed; they were dead eyes, Zhao noted, unencumbered by emotion. “The Admiral’s life is worth any price, Chinese or foreign never mind.”

Zhao knew this was the most important thing he would ever do. He spent excited hours in the little room he had rented in a house behind the Royal, smoking, stubbing out cigarettes on the windowsill, watching the back door and the musicians and the comings and goings of cooks and maids and waiters. He picked out the pianist easily, for he walked like a man in charge, and passed in and out without an instrument.

Still, Zhao Funian needed someone inside the theater to tell him what went on, especially any words that might be exchanged between Thomas Greene and that whore Admiral Morioka, and soon his crosshairs settled on a waiter named Cheng Guiyang. A few nights before, he had overheard him at a noodle stall near the theater after closing, speaking in the soft, sibilant accent of Wu, as familiar to Zhao Funian as his own voice. The man was from Zhao’s part of northern Zhejiang, maybe even from Pingyao County itself. Zhao had paused nearby, pretending to study the turnip-shred-stuffed cakes in the opposite stall, listening until he was sure and even, in a stroke of the gods’ favor, hearing the man’s name when another waiter walked past and addressed him: Cheng Guiyang. Thus blessed by fate, he had been able to learn enough things about the fellow to create a spiderweb of
guanxi
between them from the first hello. Cheng was a perfect target: he slept in a room of stacked bunks with seven other men, who called him Wing Bean; ate but twice a day; and sent every other copper cash back to his family.

Zhao made the opening move at two thirty
A.M
., after following the waiter to a food stall. Cheng was tearing into a plate of
xiao long bao
, soup dumplings filled with hot broth and ginger-scented pork. As he was passing, Zhao contrived to drop a handful of copper cash so that some would roll under Cheng’s stool, forcing him to stop eating as Zhao picked them up. “You should be more careful,” Cheng admonished him.

Zhao said, “Your accent—I know the speech of Wu. You are from Zhejiang?”

“Yes,” said Cheng, annoyance evaporating into curiosity.

“The northern part, near the Yangtze?”

“Yes—”

“Wait! My friend, this is not possible!” Now Zhao had assumed the opposite stool, moving as lightly as a shadow. “I believe I recognize you. Could you be from Cheng Family Village on the Li River?”

“I am!” Cheng stared.

“Your father brewed vinegar, isn’t it? The Tai Yang Company, that one? He was brew master there?”

Wing Bean’s eyes widened. “You knew my father?”

“Yes. Such a good man.”

“I don’t remember you.”

“I was from Guo Family Village.”

He saw Cheng studying him, raking his mind for a memory. Time to play his high card. “About your father,” he said, tilting his head in sympathy. “It’s too pitiable about him passing over.”

The younger man froze, stricken, and looked down at his half-eaten dumpling, the pork fragrance steaming up. He blinked, and closed his eyes for a second.

“There, my friend,” said Zhao, and settled a warm hand briefly on the younger fellow’s shoulder. “All will be well. The gods have watched out for you if they have brought you to Shanghai.”

“No. They have not.” Cheng lowered his head, and for a moment he looked no older than a child. “I work hard but I earn nothing. At home they need my help, but I can barely feed myself.”

“Ei,”
said Zhao. “It’s like that, is it? Put yourself at ease.” He too was speaking in their home accent, pouring it on nice and thick. “Persons from the same native place should stick together, isn’t it so?” He held up some coins and called to the vendor for more dumplings. “Now, my friend—what is your name again? Your given name?”